Carmakers are adding everything from remote car unlocking to self-parking systems in their newest models as they try to make vehicles more connected to the Internet and more automated.

But the 2015 Drive Report from market research company JD Power found that 20 percent of new car owners had still not used approximately half of the technology features available in their vehicles after three months of purchase – the period after which drivers are less likely to adopt new features, researchers say. […]

“Customers say, ‘I have a competing technology that’s easier to use, or I’ve already paid for it – so why do I need it again?'” said Kristin Kolodge, executive director of driver interaction at JD Power.

Here you have a situation where:

Many mobile devices (cars) are poorly-designed, and

Overloaded by technology (that is poorly communicated), and

A context where people use smartphones and find them helpful.

… if only there was a company well-positioned and willing to think different about what consumers really value out of the entire car experience.

The mobile phone in general and the smartphone in particular are designed to be carried first, and spoken into second. […] They’ve fallen out of favor because using the telephone feels mechanically ungainly as much as socially so. Don’t Hate the Phone Call, Hate the Phone (Ian Bogost; The Atlantic)

Language like “interface-free” and “invisible UI” point up just how stuck we are on the idea of VISUAL interfaces. (Josh Clark, @bigmediumjosh; Twitter)

I think Apple’s logic is that they want top-tier iPhone industrial designs to sit atop the lineup for two years […].

Keeping the same industrial design for two years serves multiple purposes:

It recoups the hard work put into design. During this time, designers can focus on developing better ideas for the next generation of products. Remember, design isn’t just the “look”; it’s also the functionality. Considerations like display size, button placement, material selection for durability and radio transmission, heat dissipation, acoustics, waterproofing, and more.

It allows for a similar hardware configuration inside the device, because the dimensions remain the same. This minimizes changes to the shape and layout of the circuit board, the antenna placement, the battery shape, etc. In turn, this makes efficient use of Apple’s massive investment in manufacturing. Engineers and supply chain experts can shift their attention to new consumer needs and new technologies to address them.

It allows many customers who like the design, but who aren’t able to upgrade when the first version debuts, to purchase it in year two. And the people who do buy the first version of any design don’t feel, one year later, that their model is out-dated.

Basically, solving important problems is intense work, and Apple wants to maximize the return for the time, investment, and risk.

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Update: To improve readability, I shortened the introduction of this post, by removing the reference to Jason Snell’s article and reducing the excerpt from John Gruber. That content wasn’t directly related to the rationale for a two-year design cycle.

If Jony Ive and his team — who are the most constrained to continuity in the iPhone’s design language — can make the latest major generation of iPhones look different from the last major generation, then so can any other OEM. Imitation is a choice. Different design is possible. It just requires leaders with fortitude and integrity.

On that note, congrats to the Nokia and Microsoft industrial design teams, who cared to be original and succeeded with great designs: the N9 and the Lumia series.

But Hugo had more to say:

Without a doubt every smartphone these days kind of looks like every other smartphone, right? You have to have curved corners. You have to have at least a home button, in some way. That’s how interaction design works.

Sounds like an opportunity to me – an opportunity to be different in a sea of look-alikes. This difference can range from the small to the large: industrial design details, form factor, or even product type. Think of the beige boxes that PC makers shipped before Apple introduced the iMac. Or the candy bar phones before the Motorola RAZR.

Interesting Tweet from Evan Blass, here. Below is a screenshot, to make sure readers can also see it in RSS or email.

Letting consumers pick the color, finish, or material of their device is cool – that’s MotoMaker. And now it’s coming to a very budget-friendly product.

I have great respect for the mobile phone makers that make affordable devices for billions of people who, otherwise, might not have one. To echo the title of this site, they move mobile forward in a big way. Motorola, and the Moto G product, are great examples of companies and products that do this. And the thing about a product like the Moto G is that you don’t need a case. It’s very durable.

No one expects Apple to name projects and specify details but, if Ive was going to stay meaningfully involved with products, you’d expect some additional language and emphasis in that regard. It’s a sign, in my view, that his future contributions while of some importance, probably won’t be on the critical path to shipping a product.

From the “original” senior leadership team, only Cook, Schiller, Cue, and Ive remain. This matters in the sense that they learned a lot from Steve Jobs and from each other (and taught Steve Jobs, in many ways, I’m sure). Of these, my guess is that Schiller and Ive have both the deepest and most rounded product sense. I think there’s little question they’ve been the face, heart, and hands guiding Apple products for the past few years, no doubt with support from a broad cast of talented employees.

So, what’s the answer to the questions above? I have no idea. None. These things are rarely that clear; the Steve Jobs era(s) were the exception, and even then “clear” is the wrong word. Perhaps “clear-er”. If I had to guess, here’s my hunch: Jony Ive will continue to give his senior leadership vote, as he always has. And Phil Schiller will continue to drive product definitions, with Kevin Lynch continuing to be on-point for the watch.

This is what transition at Apple looks like: slow, smooth, hopefully imperceptible from a business standpoint. And yet very apparent from a human standpoint, as one era transitions to the next.

So nothing changes? Not quite. Richard Howarth (industrial design) and Alan Dye (interface design), Jony Ive’s direct reports now have a (bigger) voice and more respect. They’re not “new”, but they’re new to the senior leadership team. With Ive transitioning from day-today management, you can be sure they’ll be in senior staff meetings. The direction, detail, and questions in key discussions will be different. Better or worse? Of course we won’t know, at least for a while. But different.

Oh, and Phil and Eddy, they might be edging off a bit, too. Again, of course I’m guessing. But this is what transition at Apple looks like: slow, smooth, hopefully imperceptible from a business standpoint. And yet very apparent from a human standpoint, as one era transitions to the next.

[Richard Howarth and Alan Dye] are not “new”, but they’re new to the senior leadership team.

Several reasons, in order of most mission-focused (and most frequent) to least:

To provide more formal and senior oversight to a critical area

To accommodate an executive’s strength or weakness

To retain an executive (e.g., match a prior role)

To move an executive off the critical path of the company’s operations

To honor an executive

Which of these might apply in this situation?

1. Nope. Design was already a formal area, and Jony Ive was already in charge.

2. Nope. Some of Ive’s comments to Stephen Fry might appear to support this (i.e., that the move accommodates Ive’s design strength by freeing him from administrative and management work). But, in fact, as Senior Vice President of Design, he was already able to pick and choose how he applied his time and talent. If this was truly about reducing time spent in meetings, performance reviews, and resource planning, it wouldn’t require a promotion to “Chief” anything.

3. Nope. Not an issue.

4. Likely, in my view. For the same reasons that Seth Weintraub of 9to5mac speculates about: that Ive probably wants to spend more time with family. Ive’s promotion makes for a smoother transition. Important when you’re the world’s biggest company, and when your stock is particularly sensitive to news.

5. Likely, in my view. If you read Tim Cook’s memo, it’s not about citing new information (accomplishments) as the promotion drivers. It’s about rewarding Ive with the title that matches the influence he’s had all along. It’s an acknowledgment; an honor. And he uses general language that, while in the present tense, also sounds commemorative. In fact, this is a strong indication that this “memo” was really meant for public consumption. And by “public”, I mean “investors”.

But between Cook’s memo and Fry’s article, talk about the future is glaringly absent.

But wait, doesn’t Tim Cook’s memo also say that Jony Ive will now focus “entirely on current design projects, new ideas and future initiatives”? Yes.

But between Cook’s memo and Fry’s article, talk about the future is glaringly absent. In Fry’s piece, Ive only went so far as to inform him about helping with the store re-design and the campus.

Let me state this more clearly: Ive, to-date a product-critical executive has been promoted into a more senior and impactful role, and the discussion about his future is limited to stores and work spaces. (To be clear, the stores are absolutely critical to Apple’s success and, arguably, in need of a meaningful re-design. Vital work. Interesting work. Odds that it makes the best use of Ive’s time and talent? Low, I would say.)

Ive, to-date a product-critical executive has been promoted into a more senior and impactful role, and the discussion about his future is limited to stores and work spaces. […] a sign […] that his future contributions, while of some importance, probably won’t be on the critical path to shipping a product.

Granted, no one expects Apple to name projects and specify details but, if Ive was going to stay meaningfully involved with products, you’d expect some additional language and emphasis in that regard. It’s a sign, in my view, that his future contributions while of some importance, probably won’t be on the critical path to shipping a product.

So, to repeat: it appears that Ive is gently stepping aside, being duly honored by Tim Cook, and reserving the right to make an impact here or there, on the project and level of his choosing. If this — and, to emphasize — it’s obviously speculative — if this is true, it’s certainly an immensely well-earned, well-timed taper to an incredibly-impactful and inspirational career.

If [his stepping aside] is true, it’s certainly an immensely well-earned, well-timed taper to an incredibly-impactful and inspirational career.

(Correction: I don’t think I should have framed it that way. It really depends on what other features you’ve developed and what parts of the product you’re able to control. And, crucially, the degree of improvement you’re able to make.)

The clusters of cores have different performance and power characteristics. With clever scheduling the mobile OS is able to use the best core for the best job […] more cores equals […] better power efficiency, but not necessarily more performance.

I think this is how a lot of first run experiences go wrong: the team that makes it gets into it and gets it, and understands it, and loses track of what it would be like to [use it on the] first day, and then you feel “oh my god, this thing [is driving me nuts]”.

Yes. And there’s the related danger of knowing all the little work-arounds and compensating actions that make your product tolerable. But of course, new consumers won’t know those. So what can you do? Keep getting perspectives from others. Ideally, in your target market but new to your product. And get some distance from your product (time, sleep).

4. Inside Microsoft’s Secret Design Lab. No real secrets, but it’s always good to see how stuff gets prototyped. This sort of openess is one of the best things I’ve seen in years: Motorola, Microsoft, (and I’m sure I’m missing others) letting people see a little bit about how devices get made. I like Apple’s videos (e.g., glimpses of how the watch is manufactured), but those are factory settings (nothing wrong with factories), whereas I prefer the device labs.

Anticipatory design is fundamentally different: decisions are made and executed on behalf of the user. The goal is not to help the user make a decision, but to create an ecosystem where a decision is never made—it happens automatically and without user input. The design goal becomes one where we eliminate as many steps as possible and find ways to use data, prior behaviors and business logic to have things happen automatically, or as close to automatic as we can get. […]

At its core, the function of anticipatory design is to gather the data necessary and move from the era of personalization to automated decision-making.

I’d emphasize that, despite the reliance on more data, the value of the human designer will remain paramount. There’s just so much information that isn’t captured, analyzed, or understood, but that goes into “good design sense”. This relates quite well to the earlier post on Frictionless Design Choices.

Insightful post by Steven Sinofsky (of Andreessen Horowitz; before that, president of Microsoft’s Windows division). He writes at Learning by Shipping. Below are key highlights (I added the orange emphasis):

Frictionless and minimalism are related but not necessarily the same. Often they are conflated which can lead to design debates that are difficult to resolve.

A design can be minimal but still have a great deal of friction. The Linux command line interface is a great example of minimal design with high friction.

Minimalist design is about reducing the surface area of an experience.

Frictionless design is about reducing the energy required by an experience.

Therefore the real design challenge is not simply maintaining minimalism, but enhancing a product without adding more friction.

Low-Friction Design Patterns
Assuming you’re adding features to a product, the following are six design patterns to follow, each essentially reducing friction in your product. They cause the need to learn, consider, futz, or otherwise not race through the product to get something done.